That focus was illustrated at the Namco Bandai Global Gamers Day with both DiRT Showdown and several new projects for the company's F1 franchise.

"We've been publishing F1 games for three years and have built up a very good relationship with F1 management and the teams themselves," explained Eddy. "Recently, we've extended our relationship with the organisation and they've been very pleased with what we've done with the games and for the image of the sport amongst gamers. This year is the year that F1 breaks out."

Eddy went on to outline three new titles in development for the F1 brand. The first, F1 Online, is to take the form of a management title that will see you build and control a F1 team and feature top-down, Micro Machines-style visuals. The second is a family-orientated title aimed at enticing younger gamers to the franchise, with more details expected later in the year.

Finally, there's the fully-fledged F1 core experience of F1 2012, "Our passion for F1 has helped us massively and determined what we wanted to do with F1 in the first place," commented creative director Steve Hood. "It's not just about chaining the races together but about understanding what F1 is about and building an experience around that. We want to replicate what people read about in newspapers and see on TV."

To accomplish this, F1 2012 will feature several tweaks to add a new weather system, an expanded career mode and a new entrance point into the game with the Young Drivers Test.

This latter will reflect the action of the event that happens towards the end of each season at which budding F1 drivers are invited to work with the teams and, in many cases, drive a F1 car for the first time.

"It's not about going out and smashing the fastest lap but about working with car, being consistent, not damaging the car and getting used to the feeling of it," explained Hood.

"We want to use this as our tutorial but it will also take advantage of the fact that a lot of people will have played F1 before. This means giving them the opportunity to not just learn the basics and set the control and camera options but also to get a better score to unlock different contract offers for career mode.

"It's not just about the player being forced into a tutorial, but that it actually has a purpose for those that don't need as much guidance."

Codemasters Racing also rolled out DiRT Showdown during the event, showing the arcade racer's over-the-top, event-based structure in which players compete in racing, demolition derby and freestyle Hoonigan tournaments.

"There are two distinct experiences in DiRT 3 and since DiRT 2 it's been gradually moving towards that action/extreme sports element," said game producer Iain Smith. "DiRT 4 is coming, you can be sure of that, but Showdown works as a balls-out, more extreme and over-the-top experience."

Tying together F1, DiRT Showdown and all of Codemaster's future racing titles is its new online social service, RaceNet. A free service, RaceNet will provide a community platform that tracks stats, awards, and rivalries with friends.

Codemasters intends for it to bring together the players of its games by providing community events and issuing challenges to players, either to be completed individually or as a group. One such example was for players to drain an entire tanker of fuel by competing in events or driving for the sheer fun of it; every player that contributes to the success of any challenge earns XP, awards and items to further customise their cars.

RaceNet is designed as a free service, but communications manager Adrian Lawton didn't rule out the possibility of adding a premium tier further down the line, should demand prove sufficient.

"We want people to engage with our content and the games benefit if there's an active community playing the games," he said. "That's not say that at some point in time we might look at a premium aspect to it, but it's been designed as a free service to support the games and bring them all together."

With the rebranding, further commitment to F1 and implementation of RaceNet, Codemasters is wholly embracing its racing roots. Registration for RaceNet opens on May 1, alongside the launch of the DiRT Showdown playable demo and perks will be awarded to those who sign-up during the initial registration window. The service will then go into full-feature mode with the launch of DiRT Showdown on May 25 and every future Codemasters Racing game will incorporate the community features of the service.